1163 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 26 May \ on: Bubbles to live in mostly_harmless
The play between our feelings about reality and its raw is really interesting. I never saw reality and dressing it up as mortal enemies (but they obviously can be at odds). To the contrary, I think you can’t dress reality well without understanding reality well, and yourself, reality's beholder, well. The ideal bubble maker is a tailor and eschews readymade bubbles. It's the readymade bubbles that give bubbles a bad name.
I also think we all make and have bubbles, whether we wish we did or not, in order to move about reality's harshness. Our senses are such a bubble, acting as both a lens and filter to reality. Our brains, picking up where our senses leave off, are bubble makers too. I think the goal is to generate bubbles like our senses, made to enhance reality with a purpose, yet never get so comfortable in a particular bubble that we can't acknowledge it, remove it, replace it, or perform regular maintenance on it. Ideally, we probably have a wardrobe of many such bubbles that we wear depending on our task and reality's weather.
I’m frequently on the edge of misery so I think the effect of dressing up reality has always been easy to measure; "where has this change moved me relative to misery's edge?" I wonder if I've kept the habits that take me back to misery's edge to experiment with ways to better get off the edge, removing my bubble so I can try on a new one. There are so many viable bubbles and we have to wear one, so I want to wear to the best one for me.
This post gave me so many weird, visually-assisted thoughts. Thanks for writing it.
To the contrary, I think you can’t dress reality well without understanding reality well, and yourself, reality's beholder, well.
This is a provocative idea, but upon reflection, seems right. A specific instance of the template to build something to operate within X, you better understand X. And you better understand your tools.
It's the readymade bubbles that give bubbles a bad name.
This is good enough to go on a t-shirt :)
"where has this change moved me relative to misery's edge?"
I would love an example if you can think of a sharable one.
This post gave me so many weird, visually-assisted thoughts.
Your comment did the same for me. Gracias.
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I would love an example if you can think of a sharable one.
One that's a little more consistent with your post is interior decorating. The design bubble that gets me farthest from misery's edge is a design that winks at the viewer. What that means is hard to describe but, for me, it's some combination of eclectic (lots to explore) and abundantly thoughtful (lots to appreciate). The more miserable I am, or can make myself, with the status of a room the more it drives me to make it winky (although usually I focus on making it thoughtful because I saturate a room early and easily with eclectic things).
People who like to learn are super familiar with moving to/from misery's edge. Not understanding a subject is like misery's edge on that subject's planet. Your existing bubble wardrobe doesn't do you much good in a new biome with new forces and a new atmosphere.
I think small improvements are easier to measure near misery's edge, and you're kind of eliminating confounders/baggage when you start from the edge and build a new bubble from scratch.
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